Chapter 8 Chapter 8 Crozier

Seventy degrees five minutes north latitude, ninety-eight degrees twenty-three minutes west longitude November 9, 1847 A year, two months and eight days have passed since Sir John held that important meeting on the Erebus, and the two ships are still frozen not far from where they were on September 1846.Currents from the northwest move the entire ice sheet together, but over the past year it has slowly circled the sea of ​​ice, icebergs, ice ridges and the two stranded Royal Navy ships, so the two ships' The position remained roughly the same, still stuck twenty-five miles northwest of King William Island.Like a piece of iron on a metal music disc in an officers' conference room, they continued to spin slowly.

During the November day, or rather the hours of darkness during which there was daylight, Captain Crozier spent the day searching for the missing crew members William Strong and Thomas Evans.Of course no one expected the two men to be alive, and despite the high risk of being snatched by that thing on the ice, they continued their search.The captain and crew did not consider anything else. They sent four teams at the same time, divided into four quadrants (note: the four areas divided by the horizontal axis and the vertical axis in the plane Cartesian coordinate system are divided into four quadrants) to search.There were five men in each team, one with two lanterns and four with loaded shotguns or muskets.Shifts change every four hours.Whenever a team is shivering from the cold and comes back from the outside, the team that is going to change shifts has already put on warm clothes and is waiting on the deck: the guns have been cleaned, the bullets are loaded, and they are ready to fire at any time, and the lanterns have already been filled. out of oil.They then continued to search in the direction where the previous team had stopped searching.From the position of the ship, the four teams searched the chaotic ice field in an increasingly large circle. The guards on the deck could see their lanterns through the cold fog and darkness, but small icebergs, large ice rocks, Ice ridges or obstacles that are too far away will make them appear and disappear.Captain Crozier and a sailor with a red lantern walked through each quadrant, confirmed the status of each team, and then returned to the Terror to visit the personnel and conditions on board.

They searched for twelve hours. At six o'clock in the afternoon when the evening watch's second bell rang, the last search party came back. None of the teams found the two missing men, but a few sailors looked ashamed as they headed towards the fierce wind in the chaotic ice. , and even shoot directly at the ice, thinking of the ice tower as an approaching white bear.Crozier was the last to come in, and he followed them into the main cabin. By the time Crozier climbed down the ladder, most of the crew had put away their wet coats and boots and were eating at the hinged dining table in the bow, and the officers in the stern.The attendant Thomas Joe Parson and Lieutenant Liduo hurried over to help him take off the layers of his coat that were frozen on the front.

"You're frozen, Captain," said Joe Parsons. "Your skin is white with frostbite. Come and have your dinner in the officers' mess aft, sir." Crozier shook his head. "I must speak to Lieutenant Colonel Fitzjian. Edward, is there a messenger from their ship while I'm gone?" "No, sir," Lieutenant Liddell said. "Please eat something, sir." Joe Parsons continued to urge him.As an attendant, he was quite tall. When begging the captain, his deep voice became like a roar, not a pleading. Crozier shook his head. "Pack some biscuits for me, Thomas, if you please. I can eat them on the way to the Nether."

Joe Parson seemed very disapproving of this stupid decision, but he quickly walked over to Mr. Digger who was busy baking something in the big stove.It was dinner time at this time, and the main cabin was warm, the warmest in the 24 hours a day, and the temperature could rise to more than 40 degrees.These days, only a tiny amount of coal is burned on board to generate heat. "How many people do you want to take with you?" Li Duo asked. "No one, Edward. After everyone has eaten, I want you to arrange at least eight more teams to search the ice field for the last four hours."

"But, sir, should you consider..." Li Duo stopped talking halfway through. Crozier knew what he wanted to say.Although the distance between the Terror and the Erebus was more than a mile, it was a lonely and dangerous mile, and it sometimes took hours to cover it.In a snowstorm, or if the wind is slightly stronger on the ice field, it is possible to get lost or be unable to move an inch in the strong wind.Crozier forbade the crew to walk alone the distance, and when a message had to be sent across, he would send at least two of them, and order them to turn back in case of bad weather.The two-hundred-foot-high iceberg between the two ships often blocked the view from the flashes and flames of each other's ships. Although people went to shovel and level the road every day, it was actually a maze. It is composed of constantly moving ice towers, ice ridges full of ice steps, overturned small icebergs and messy ice formations.

"Sure, Edward," said Crozier, "I'll take my compass." Lieutenant Liduo smiled. Although he had been in this area for three years, the joke was no longer funny.According to instrument measurements, the position of the two ships trapped in the ice is almost exactly above the magnetic north pole.So, a compass is as useless here as a sounding stick. Lieutenant Irving walked sideways.On the young man's frostbitten cheeks there were patches of white spots and patches of frozen skin that had been turned open, glistening with the ointment applied to them. "Captain," said Irwin quickly, "do you see silence out there on the ice?"

Crozier had taken off his hat and scarf and was brushing the ice from his sweat- and fog-drenched hair with his hands. "You mean she wasn't in the little hole behind the bed area where she was hiding?" "Yes, sir." "Have you searched elsewhere in the main cabin?" Crozier was mainly worried that the Eskimo woman had gone where she shouldn't be when most of the people were out searching or waiting on deck. "Yes, sir. No sign of her. I've asked a few people, but no one has seen her since yesterday evening. Just before the . . . attack." "Was she on deck when that thing attacked Private Heller and Sailor Strong?"

"No one knows, Captain. She could have been on deck, and only Heller and Strong were on deck at the time." Crozier sighed.He thought, six months ago, this mystery guest appeared with this nightmare, and now it would be too ironic if she was captured by a creature closely related to her appearance. "Search the whole ship, Lieutenant Irwin," he said. "Search every nook and cranny, closet and cable room. Do a blanket search and assume that if she's not on board then she's... …was taken away." "You're quite right, sir. Shall I get three or four men to help me search?"

Crozier shook his head. "Just you, John. Before lights out, I want the others to go back to the ice field to search for Strong and Evans. If you don't find Silence, you can choose to join one of the teams." "Yes, yes, sir." Someone alerted him to the injuries in the bed area, so Crozier walked forward past the crew mess area to the bed area.Even on a dark day, when the crew at dinner tables usually has morale-boosting talk and laughter, today there was dead silence broken only by the scrape of spoons on metal and the occasional hiccup.The crew, exhausted, slumped on the seaman's box that served as a chair.Only a few tired, listless faces looked up at him as the captain pushed past them.

Crozier knocked on the wooden post on the right side of the curtain in the bed area and walked in. Dr Petty was at a table in the center of the bed area, stitching up the left arm of First Class Seaman George Kane.He looked up to see Crozier. "Good night, Captain," he said.Kane touched his forehead with his uninjured hand in salute. "What's wrong, Kane!" The young sailor began to grumble: "I was climbing a goddamn iceberg and the goddamn shotgun barrel slid up my sleeve and touched my goddamn bare arm, captain, I'm sorry I speak rough. I Pull the barrel out, and the fucking six inches fall out." Crozier nodded, then looked around.The bed area is small, but six beds have been squeezed into it.One of them is empty.The three were sleeping, probably suffering from scurvy, according to Peddy and McDonald.A fourth, David Reis, stared at the ceiling, conscious but somehow unresponsive for almost a week.In the fifth bed was Private William Heller of the Marine Corps. Crozier took another lantern from a hook on the starboard side and held it over Heller.The soldier's eyes gleamed, but he did not blink as Crozier moved the lantern closer to him.His pupils seemed dilated the whole time, and his head was bandaged, but blood and gray matter began to seep again. "Is he still alive?" Crozier asked softly. Peddy came over and wiped the blood off his hands with a cloth. "Yes, it's strange to be alive." "But we saw on the deck that his brain was still there. I can still see his brain." Peddy nodded wearily. "That's right. If it wasn't here, he might have recovered. Of course, he'd be an idiot, but I can screw a piece of metal in place of his skull and his family can take care of him, If he survives, keep him as a pet. But here..." Pety shrugged, "Pneumonia or scurvy or starvation will take his life." "How fast?" Crozier asked.Sailor Kane had stepped out through the curtain. "God knows!" Petty said. "Is the search for Evans and Strong any more, Captain?" "Yes." Crozier hung the lantern back on the hook near the entrance.The shadow once again hangs over Private Heller of the Marine Corps. "I think you must know," said the exhausted ship's doctor, "the chances of young Evans or Strong coming back alive are zero, but each search is likely to bring more flesh wounds, frostbite And many more that require amputation, many have lost a toe or more, and in a panic there will inevitably be someone shooting someone else." Crozier looked at the ship doctor calmly.If any officer or crew had spoken to him in that manner, he would have had him whipped.But because of the man's social status and exhaustion, the captain didn't bother with him.Dr. McDonald has been lying in a hammock for three days and three nights because of the flu, so Peddy is very busy these days. "Let me worry about the risks of continuing the search, Mr. Paddy. You only have to worry about how to sew up flesh and blood for people who are stupid enough to put metal directly on their skin at minus sixty degrees. Besides, If that thing outside catches you in the dark, don't you want us to find you?" Peddy smiled helplessly. "If this polar bear dude takes me, Captain, I can only hope I was carrying a scalpel so I could stick it in my own eye." "Then you should take the scalpel with you, Mr. Petty." After Crozier finished speaking, he walked through the curtain to the quiet crew dining area. Joe Parsons had wrapped some biscuits in hand towels and was waiting for him in the warm light of the kitchen. The cold outside was approaching, and Crozier felt his face, fingers, legs, and feet were on fire, but he walked quite happily.He knew it was better than feeling numb.He didn't mind the slow groaning and screaming of the ice under and around him in the dark, and the howling of the wind.He knew very well that something was following him. He has two hours to go.Most of the distance tonight was not so much walking as climbing, sprinting and butt-sliding, up, over and down ice ridges.After walking for 20 minutes, the clouds parted and the moon appeared, and three quarters of the moon appeared, illuminating the mirage-like scene.A bright moon is quite clear, surrounded by ice crystal halos.Later, he discovered that they were actually two concentric halos, the diameter of the larger circle being large enough to cover the eastern third of the night sky. There are no stars in the sky.Crozier dimmed his lights to save fuel, and went on, testing each shadow ahead with the spear he had brought, to make sure it was only shadow and not a chasm or crevasse.He had reached the eastern side of the ice mountain, where the moon was blocked, and the iceberg cast a dark, distorted shadow for a quarter of a mile across the ice sheet.Joe Parsons and Liddell insisted he should carry a shotgun, but he told them he didn't want to take anything that heavy on the road.The more important reason was that he didn't feel that the shotgun had any effect on the enemy he had in mind. Suddenly there was an unusually quiet moment, and everything stopped at the same time surprisingly, so that he could only hear his own breathing.Crozier suddenly remembered his childhood experience.One winter night, he came home very late, because he played with his friends on the hills from afternoon to evening.At first he ran with his head down, trying to cross the frosty heather, and then stopped about a half mile from home.He remembered standing there, looking at the lighted windows of the village.The last gleam of light in the winter night sky had faded and the surrounding hills had begun to fade into blurred, dark, insubstantial shapes that were foreign to the young boy.Until in the weaker and weaker light, even the house he saw at the edge of the village lost all its features, and it couldn't even be seen as a three-dimensional object. As the snow began to fall, Crozier remembered, standing alone in the darkness outside the stone pen.He knew he'd be slapped for coming home too late, and coming home later would only make him worse for repairs, but he didn't want to walk toward the light of home.He wanted to enjoy the gentle sound of the night wind, and also because he was the only boy, and perhaps the only human being, in this dark night smelling of imminent snow, in this windy meadow where pampas grass froze.He was a different world from the lighted windows and the warm fireplace, and he knew he belonged to the village, but he was not part of it now.It felt horrifying, almost like tasting forbidden fruit, for he had privately found himself separated from everything and everyone in the cold and dark.Now he felt the same feeling again, the same feeling he had experienced many times over the years on his expeditions to the poles of the earth. Something descended from a high ridge of ice and followed him. Crozier turned up the lantern and put it on the ice.The golden circle of light can only reach fifteen feet, and beyond it is darkness.He bit off the thick glove with his teeth and let it fall to the ice, leaving only a thin glove on his right hand.He handed the spear to his left hand and took the pistol from his coat pocket.The rustle of ice sliding over the ridges grew louder, and Crozier cocked his hammer.The shadow of the iceberg blocked the moonlight, and the captain could only see the huge black shadow of the ice cube constantly shaking and moving in the flickering light of the flames. Then something furry and unrecognizable was moving along the ice shed he had just climbed down, just ten feet above him and not fifteen feet to the west, ready to jump on him with a single leap. "Stop." Crozier immediately pulled out his bulky pistol, "Show your identity." The figure didn't make a sound and continued to move. Crozier did not shoot.He dropped the longship spear in his hand, picked up the lantern and carried it forward. He was on the verge of shooting at the sight of the furry thing moving in waves, but he held himself back at the last moment.The figure slid down a bit, and then moved quickly, apparently falling onto the ice.Crozier let the pistol's hammer return to its original position, put the gun back in his pocket, and bent to pick up his mittens, still holding the lantern. The Lady of Silence stepped into the light, her fur coat and sealskin trousers making her look like a short, chubby animal.She pulls the hood very low to keep out the wind, so Crozier can't see her face. "Damn it, woman," Crozier murmured, "you were shot dead by my uncontrollable sailor by a second. Where the hell have you been?" She moved closer, almost within arm's reach, but her face was still shrouded in the darkness of the hood. He suddenly felt a chill running from the back of his neck down his spine.Crozier remembered his grandmother Moira once describing a transparent skull face hidden in the banshee's black hood, and he held the lantern between the two of them. The young woman's face was human rather than a witch's, her black eyes wide open and reflecting the light, her face expressionless.Crozier remembered that he had never seen an expression on her face, so maybe he could barely say that she was curious.Even when they shot someone who might have been her husband, her brother, her father, and let her watch that person die in her own blood, she was expressionless. "No wonder the crew thinks you're a witch who brings bad luck," Crozier said.On board the ship, in front of the crew, he had always been polite to the Eskimo witch and followed the rules, but now he was neither on board nor in front of the crew.It was the first and only time he and the wretched woman were far from their ship at the same time, and he was very cold and very tired. Lady Silence stares at him, then holds out a mittened hand.Crozier lowered the lantern and saw that she was going to bring him something, a soft gray object that looked like a fish that had been gutted and boned, leaving only the skin and flesh. It was a sailor's wool sock. Crozier took it over and felt a mass at the toe of the sock with his hand, and immediately determined that it was a certain part of a human foot, probably the big toe and other toes, and it was still bloody and warm. Crozier had been to France, knew some people who had been stationed in India, and he had heard stories of werewolves and tiger men.On the Van Diemen Landmass, where he had met Sophie Creek, Sophie told him some local legends.Some aborigines can turn into monsters, they are called "Tasmanian devils", this kind of creature can tear off people's hands and feet directly. Crozier shook the wool socks and looked into the eyes of Ms. Silence.Her eyes were as black as the holes the Terror's crew had dug in the icefields through which the ship's dead were thrown into the sea, and which would eventually freeze again. It was a mass of ice, not a foot.But the socks themselves were not frozen hard.Wool socks haven't been out in minus sixty degrees for a long time.It's reasonable to guess that the woman came from the boat with the wool sock on, but Crozier didn't think that was the case. "Where's Strong?" asked the captain. "Where's Evans?" Silence did not respond to the names. Crozier sighed, stuffed the wool socks into the pocket of his coat, and picked up the spear. "We're closer to the Erebus than the Terror," he said. "You'll have to go with me now." Crozier turned his back on her, feeling another chill run from the back of his neck down his spine.In the increasingly strong wind, his feet creaked as he walked towards the silhouette of the Nether.A minute later, he heard her soft footsteps on the ice behind him. They climbed over the last ridge, and Crozier saw that the lights of the Erebus were brighter than he had ever seen before.The ship was stuck in the ice, held up weirdly, listing so badly that there were a dozen or more lanterns hanging from the yard on the port side as far as he could see.Very wasteful of lamp oil. Crozier knew that the Nether was more damaged than his Terror.Except for the long drive shaft last summer - which was designed to be pulled out in time to avoid being damaged by the ice under the sea surface, but was not noticed when breaking the ice in July - was bent and the propeller was missing Besides, the flagship has suffered far more damage than its sister ships over the past two winters: in the bay of Beach Island, which is barely a safe haven, the sea ice has been severely twisted, cracked and loosened. The slats of the hull, and the Erebus was hurt more than the Terror. Last summer, they frantically tried to force their way through the ice, and damaged the flagship's rudder. The number of screws, rivets, and metal brackets that burst due to the severe cold was also more in Sir John's ship; The extent to which the iron skin of the hull that came to break the ice fell off or twisted was even worse than that of the Nether.Although the Terror was also pushed up and squeezed by the ice, the situation of the HMS Erebus was even more serious. For the past two months (that is, in the third winter), she seemed to be on an ice pedestal, and the entire ship was in danger. The ship was pushed up, and the pressure of the sea ice also drove a long crack in the hull along the starboard side of the bow, the bottom of the center of the ship, and the port side of the stern. Crozier knew that Sir John Franklin's flagship would never sail.Its current captain, James Fitzgerald, and his crew also understood. Before stepping into the area lit by the ship's lantern, Crozier ducked behind a ten-foot ice tower, pulling the silence behind him. "Hey, people on board!" he yelled in a voice that could be heard throughout the shipyard. A shotgun blast rang out, and a serac five feet away from Crozier shattered into scattered shards, reflecting the dim light of a lantern. "Stop shooting, you bloody blinds, you fucking slobs, brains and shit-packing idiots!" Crozier snarled. There was a commotion on the Erebus when some officer snatched the shotgun from the idiot guard with the shit in his head. "It's all right," Crozier said to the cowering Eskimo girl. "We can go now." He stopped, not just because Lady Silence hadn't followed him into the light.Now he could see her face in the reflected light, and she was smiling.Her full lips, which had never moved, were slightly curved, smiling, as if she understood and liked his outburst just now. But before Crozier could confirm that she was really smiling, Silence faded away into the tangled shadows of the ice pile. Crozier shook his head.If this crazy woman wants to be frozen, so be it.He had something to discuss with Captain Fitzjian, and then he had to walk a long way back to his ship in the dark before he could lie down and sleep. Tired, he realized that for at least the past half an hour, he hadn't felt the presence of his feet at all.He walked unsteadily on the dirty icy ramp towards the ruined deck of the late Sir John's flagship.